Doubts over ARD's future DTM coverage after rights-holder criticism

Motor racing - 10 Oct 2017

Author: Martin Ross

The chances of ARD, the German public-service broadcaster, retaining its rights to the Deutsche Tourenwagen Masters, the Germany-based touring car motor racing series, appear to have diminished after criticism from the rights-holder.

Internationale Tourenwagen-Rennen, the DTM’s commercial rights-holder and marketing arm, is edging closer to announcing its domestic broadcaster from next season onwards after recently issuing an invitation to tender.

The future involvement of ARD, the long-running broadcaster of the series, has been called into question, however, by comments made by Gerhard Berger, the ITR chairman, and Hans-Joachim Stuck, president of the DMSB, the German motor sports federation.

Berger told Kicker, the German sports publication: “On television we have around 2 million viewers per weekend. This is very good, but I think it’s a shame for our great sport that ARD neither advertises or promotes the broadcasts.”

Berger, a former Formula 1 driver, claims that the series has a potential domestic audience of 3 million each weekend and that “more people would watch if they knew” about the broadcasts.

ARD’s programme length came in for criticism from Stuck, who said: “It’s a shame that the broadcast starts so soon before the race, instead of freeing up ten more minutes to talk about the drivers so you know how they look, how they live and what they do.”

ARD signed a two-year renewal ahead of the 2016 season, a contract reported to be worth up to €5 million (now $5.9 million) per year.

Commercial free-to-air broadcasters RTL, ProSiebenSat.1 and Sport1 (which also has a pay-TV channel) have all been mentioned as possible successors to ARD, while there is also reported to be interest from Servus TV, the Austria-based commercial network.

ARD’s audiences for DTM have contracted in recent seasons, with an average of 910,000 viewers for the eight events so far this season (compared to 940,000 viewers last season and 1 million in 2015). ARD’s average audience for the Sunday races has been 1.1 million this year.

The public-service broadcaster has been a broadcast partner of the DTM since 2000 and has held exclusive live rights since 2005.

ARD was criticised earlier this year for prematurely ending coverage of the DTM race at Norisring, an action that prompted Berger to tell Auto Motor und Sport magazine that it shows the broadcaster “does not have the passion for the sport that we want.”

Sport1 already holds non-exclusive platform-neutral rights to the DTM in Germany, Austria and Switzerland and, as part of the agreement, shows one-hour highlights programmes on its free-to-air channel, plus coverage on its pay-TV channel Sport1+.